Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna

Copyright © 2003 Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton with Herman Viola

Photographs copyright © 2003 Ashley Lefrak

Published by the National Geographic Society.

All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the National Geographic Society is strictly prohibited.

The verses that introduce each chapter come from a traditional Ariaal warrior song.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lekuton, Joseph.

Facing the lion: growing up Maasai on the African savanna / by Joseph Lekuton with Herman J. Viola.

p. cm.

Summary: A member of the Maasai people describes his life as he grew up in a northern Kenya village and traveled to America to attend college.

ISBN: 978-1-4263-0667-9

1. Lekuton, Joseph—Juvenile literature. 2. Masai (African people)—Kenya—Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. Masai (African people)—Kenya—Social life and customs—Juvenile literature. [1. Lekuton, Joseph. 2. Masai (African people)—Biography. 3. Masai (African people)—Kenya—Social life and customs. 4. Blacks—Kenya—Biography.] I. Viola, Herman J. II. Title.

DT433.545.M33L45 2003

967.62?004965—dc21

2003000750

Version: 2017-07-05

These words are dedicated to my mother, Nkasiko.

Although unable to read or write, she gave me a priceless

education. And to my mothers in America, Bea, Ricki,

Jackie, Anne, Betty, and Kathleen, who reflected and

reinforced my mother’s philosophy of life.

And to all the nomadic boys and girls

who have similar stories.

My story is theirs;

I just had the chance to tell mine.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 A Lion Hunt

Chapter 2 The Proud One

Chapter 3 Cows

Chapter 4 The Pinching Man

Chapter 5 School

Chapter 6 Herdsman

Chapter 7 Initiation

Chapter 8 Kabarak

Chapter 9 Soccer

Chapter 10 America

Chapter 11 A Warrior in Two Worlds

Afterword

Chapter One

A Lion Hunt

My sweet mother,

Don’t call me a baby.

I stopped being a baby when I was initiated.

I’M GOING TO TELL you the lion story.

Where I live in northern Kenya, the lion is a symbol of bravery and pride. Lions have a special presence. If you kill a lion, you are respected by everyone. Other warriors even make up songs about how brave you are. So it is every warrior’s dream to kill a lion at one point or another. Growing up, I’d had a lot of interaction with wild animals—elephants, rhinos, cape buffalo, hyenas. But at the time of this story—when I was about 14—I’d never come face-to-face with a lion, ever. I’d heard stories from all the young warriors who told me, “Wow, you know yesterday we chased this lion—” bragging about it. And I always said, “Big deal.” What’s the big deal about a lion? It’s just an animal. If I can defend myself against elephants or rhinos, I thought, why not a lion?

I WAS JUST BACK from school for vacation. It was December, and there was enough rain. It was green and beautiful everywhere. The cows were giving plenty of milk. In order to get them away from ticks, the cattle had been taken down to the lowlands. There’s good grass there, though it’s drier than in the high country, with some rocks here and there. There are no ticks, so you don’t have to worry about the health of the cattle, but the area is known for its fierce lions. They roam freely there, as if they own the land.

I spent two days in the village with my mom, then my brother Ngoliong came home to have his hair braided and asked me to go to the cattle camp along with an elder who was on his way there. I’d say the cattle camp was 18 to 24 miles away, depending on the route, through some rocky areas and a lot of shrubs. My spear was broken, so I left it at home. I carried a small stick and a small club. I wore my nanga, which is a red cloth, tied around my waist.

It took us all day to get there, but at sunset we were walking through the gap in the acacia-branch fence that surrounded our camp. There were several cattle camps scattered over a five-mile radius. At night we could see fires in the distance, so we knew that we were not alone. As soon as we got there my brother Lmatarion told us that two lions had been terrorizing the camps. But lions are smart. Like thieves, they go somewhere, they look, they take, but they don’t go back to the same place again.

Well, that was our unlucky day. That evening when the cows got back from grazing, we had a lot of milk to drink, so we were well fed. We sat together around the fire and sang songs—songs about our girlfriends, bravery songs. We swapped stories, and I told stories about school. The others were always curious to understand school. There were four families in the camp, but most of the older warriors were back at the village seeing their girlfriends and getting their hair braided. So there were only three experienced warriors who could fight a lion, plus the one elder who had come down with me. The rest of us were younger.

We went to bed around 11:30 or 12. We all slept out under the stars in the cattle camp—no bed, just a cowhide spread on bare soil. And at night it gets cold in those desert areas. For a cover I used the nanga that I had worn during the day. The piece of cloth barely covered my body, and I kept trying to make it longer and pull it close around me, but it wouldn’t stretch. I curled myself underneath it trying to stay warm.

Everything was silent. The sky was clear. There was no sign of clouds. The fire was just out. The stars were like millions of diamonds in the sky. One by one everybody fell asleep. Although I was tired, I was the last to sleep. I was so excited about taking the cows out the following morning.

During the middle of the night, I woke to this huge sound—like rain, but not really like rain. I looked up. The starlight was gone, clouds were everywhere, and there was a drizzle falling. But that wasn’t the sound. The sound was all of the cows starting to pee. All of them, in every direction. And that is the sign of a lion. A hyena doesn’t make them do that. An elephant doesn’t make them do that. A person doesn’t. Only the lion. We knew right away that a lion was about to attack us.

The other warriors started making a lot of noise, and I got up with them, but I couldn’t find my shoes. I’d taken them off before I went to sleep, and now it was pitch black. Some warriors, when they know there’s danger, sleep with their shoes in their hands and their spears right next to them. But I couldn’t find my shoes, and I didn’t even have a spear. Then the lion made just one noise: bhwuuuu! One huge roar. We started running toward the noise. Right then we heard a cow making a rasping, guttural sound, and we knew that the lion had her by the throat.

Cows were everywhere. They ran into one another and into us, too. We could hear noises from all directions—people shouting, cows running—but we couldn’t see a thing. My brother heard the lion right next to him and threw his spear. He missed the lion—and lucky for the rest of us, he missed us, too. Eventually, we began to get used to the darkness, but it was still difficult to tell a lion from a cow. My brother was the first to arrive where the cow had been killed.

The way we figured it was this: Two lions had attacked the camp. Lions are very intelligent. They had split up. One had stayed at the southern end of the camp where we were sleeping, while the other had gone to the northern end. The wind was blowing from south to north. The cows smelled the lion at the southern end and stampeded to the north—toward the other waiting lion.

When I asked my brother, “Hey, what’s going on?” he said, “The lion killed Ngoneya.” Ngoneya was my mother’s favorite cow and Ngoneya’s family was the best one in the herd. My mother depended on her to produce more milk than any other cow. She loved Ngoneya, really. At night she would get up to pet her.

I was very angry. I said, “I wish to see this lion right now. He’s going to see a man he’s never seen before.”

Just as we were talking, a second death cry came from the other end of the camp. Again we ran, but as we got closer, I told everyone to stop. “He’s going to kill all the cows!” I told my brother. And I think this is where school thinking comes in. I told him, “Look. If we keep on chasing this lion, he’s going to kill more and more. So why don’t we let him eat what he has now, and tomorrow morning we will go hunting for him.”

My brother said, “Yes, that’s a good idea,” and it was agreed. For the first time I felt like I was part of the brotherhood of warriors. I had just made a decision I was proud of.

It was muddy, it was dark, we were in the middle of nowhere, and right then we had cows that were miles away. They had stampeded in every direction, and we could not protect them. So we came back to camp and made a big fire. I looked for my shoes and I found them. By that time I was bruised all over from the cows banging into me, and my legs were bloody from the scratches I got from the acacia thorns. I hurt all over.

We started talking about how we were going to hunt the lion the next day. I could tell my brother was worried and wanted to get me out of danger. He said, “Listen, you’re fast, you can run. Run and tell the people at the other camps to come and help. We only have three real warriors here; the rest of you are younger.”

“No way,” I said. “Are you kidding me? I’m a warrior. I’m just as brave as you, and I’m not going anywhere.” At this point, I hadn’t actually seen the lion, and I absolutely refused to leave.

My brother said, “I’m going to ask you one more time, please go. Go get help. Go to the other camp and tell the warriors that we’ve found the two lions that have been terrorizing everyone, and we need to kill them today.”

And I said, “No, I’m not going.”

So he said, “Fine,” and sent the youngest boy, who was only about eight.

WHEN DAYLIGHT CAME, I took the little boy’s spear and walked out from the camp with the others. Barely 200 yards away were the two lions. One had its head right in the cow, eating from the inside. And one was just lying around: She was full. As we approached them, we sang a lion song: “We’re going to get the lion, it’s going to be a great day for all of us, all the warriors will be happy, we’ll save all our cows.”

As we got closer, the older man who was with us kept telling us to be careful. We should wait for help, he said. “This is dangerous. You have no idea what lions can do.” But no one would listen to him.

The other guys were saying, “We can do it. Be brave, everyone.” We were encouraging each other, hyping ourselves up.

My brother was so angry, so upset about our mother’s favorite cow that he was crying. “You killed Ngoneya,” he was saying. “You are going to pay for it.”

Everyone was in a trance. I felt that something inside me was about to burst, that my heart was about to come out. I was ready. Then we came face-to-face with the lions. The female lion walked away, but the male stayed. We formed a little semicircle around the male, with our long spears raised. We didn’t move. The lion had stopped eating and was now looking at us. It felt like he was looking right at me. He was big, really big. His tail was thumping the ground.

He gave one loud roar to warn us. Everything shook. The ground where I was standing started to tremble. I could see right into his throat, that’s how close we were. His mouth was huge and full of gore from the cow. I could count his teeth. His face and mane were red with blood. Blood was everywhere.

The lion slowly got up so he could show us his full presence. He roared again. The second roar almost broke my eardrums. The lion was now pacing up and down, walking in small circles. He was looking at our feet and then at our eyes. They say a lion can figure out who will be the first person to spear it.

I edged closer to my brother, being careful not to give any sign of lifting or throwing my spear, and I said, “Where’s that other camp?”

My brother said to me, “Oh, you’re going now?” He gave me a look—a look that seemed to say, You watch out because someone might think you are afraid.

But I said, “Just tell me where to go.” He told me. I gave him my spear. “It will help you,” I said, and then I took off in the direction of the other cattle camp. No warrior looked back to see where I was going. They were all concentrating on the lion.

As I ran toward the next camp, I saw that the little boy had done his job well. Warriors were coming, lots of them, chanting songs, asking our warriors to wait for them. The lion stood his ground until he saw so many men coming down, warriors in red clothes. It must have seemed to him that the whole hillside was red in color. The lion then started to look for a way out.

The warriors reasoned that the lion had eaten too much to run fast and that the muddy ground would slow him up. They thought they could run after him and kill him. They were wrong. As soon as they took their positions, the lion surged forward and took off running. The warriors were left behind. There was nothing they could do except pray that they would meet this lion again.

From that time on, I knew the word in the village was that I had run away from the lion. There was no way I could prevent it.

“You know the young Lekuton warrior?”

“Yeah.”

“He was afraid of the lion.”

My brother tried to support me, but in our society, once word like that gets out, that’s it. So I knew that I’d have to prove myself, to prove that I’m not a coward. So from then on, every time I came home for vacation, I went to the cattle camp on my own. I’d get my spear, I’d get my shoes. Even if it was 30 miles from the village, I’d go on my own, through thick and thin, through the forest and deserts. When I got there I’d take the cattle out on my own. Always I hoped something would attack our cattle so I could protect them.

Chapter 2

The Proud One

My age-mates know my bravery.

They say I am a lion.

I roar day and night.

MY PEOPLE SPEAK the Maa language, which is why we are called Maasai. There are many subgroups within the Maa culture, including mine, the Ariaal. The Ariaal is actually a mixture of two groups, the Samburu and the Rendille. My mother is Rendille; my father was Samburu. We’re nomads: We live where it’s best for the cattle, where there’s good grass and water, away from disease and pests. If the grass runs out or the water dries up, we move. If there’s better grazing land somewhere else, we move.

A warrior may walk 25 or 30 miles in a day to scout out new grazing land. He’ll just get up and go. He’ll go look to see if the grass is good and for signs of predators or people who may want to steal the cattle. Then he’ll walk back. Even at night, he’ll know exactly where he is. He’ll smell the trees and know that a particular tree grows in that place, or he’ll hear a certain bird and know exactly where that bird lives. When he returns, he’ll discuss what he’s seen with the family or the village, and they’ll decide whether to move the herd.

The Maa speakers used to live all over Kenya, from north to south. Nairobi—the name of the capital city, in the south—is a Maa word that means “cold.” My great-great-grandfather used to graze his cattle as far south as Nakuru, 300 miles from where we live now. Today there are more people, more towns, more boundaries. There are national parks. It’s harder to move around, and we live in a smaller area in the north. There are several thousand Ariaals. I don’t know the exact number because we don’t count people. It’s taboo; it’s considered greedy. Even when the government census takers come, we don’t give them a number. My mom looks the other way and gives them names. She says, “My kids are so, so, and so…”—but she doesn’t give them a number. She lets them figure it out.

I was born at the end of the rainy season, so everything was green. People were happy. They didn’t have to work too hard. The kids didn’t have to take the cattle too far to graze. No one had to go too far to get water; the water was everywhere. This was in the Marsabit district, just south of the border with Ethiopia. It’s an area of low rolling hills. The lowlands are dry—almost a desert—but the hills are cooler and wetter, especially during the rainy season. At that time, my village was on the side of a small hill called Kamboe.

Before I was born, my family was made up of my father, my father’s two wives—my other mother and my mother—a much older brother named Paraikon, who was my other mother’s son and who became a father to me when my father died, and my two older brothers, Ngoliong and Lmatarion, who were eight and five years old. Ngoliong and Lmatarion used to help my mother a lot. Most families have girls, and the girls will go get water or go get firewood. But there were no girls in my family, so my brothers would do that, and people would laugh at them. The girls in the village would laugh and say, “Look at them. They’re doing the work of a woman.” But my whole family, we just love our mom so much, so my brothers sacrificed their pride and brought water and wood and did other chores. But you can be sure of one thing: Both of them wanted a girl to be born next time. Not my father. He wanted a boy because boys take care of the cattle—he’d have another herder. But my brothers and my mother wanted a girl.

Our hut was under an acacia tree that still stands today. When my mother was pregnant, right up until the time of labor, she would go out and do chores. The evening I was born, she was part of the group of women who went to get firewood. Some of the midwives told her not to, but she likes to work so she went anyway.

That same evening a bull separated itself from the herd and came up to my mother’s hut. It was a bull from a cattle family we still have today. He never came to my mother’s hut, never. But that day he showed up and rubbed himself on the hut. And one of the elders said: “A baby boy is coming, whether you like it or not.”

About midnight—when the night is equal, as the elders say—my mom started to go into labor. Women came with herbs and other things. And when I was born, someone ran outside and said to my father, “Hey, Lekuton! Ti wa lashe!” “Baby bull!” In my language, when a child is born, we don’t say “boy” or “girl,” but lashe, which means “male cow,” or ngache, which means “female cow.”

My father made his signature sound: Hhehh! Every man has a signature, a sound he makes when he wants to be known. Right now, if I came to my mother’s hut in the middle of the night and I wanted my mom to identify me, I would make this sound: Harumph. And my mom would say, “That is my son.” Even if it’s after ten years. So my father made his Hhehh! and he said, “Yes, another herder is coming.” And my mother and my brothers? They were mad, because they knew that now they’d have to work a little harder to bring a little more wood and water.

My mom thanked the Creator all the same, and all these women came and started singing. When a baby is born in the village, it’s a big celebration. But there was a complication. Although it was the rainy season and everything was green, there was disease in the area, and people were worried about the cattle. A few days before I was born, the village had held a meeting and agreed that, with grass and water everywhere, it would be a good time to move. Now, the village can’t move the day after a baby is born, so they had to call another meeting of the elders.

“Hey, you know Lekuton’s wife has given birth to a baby boy,” they said. “It’s a blessing, and we must postpone a day or two. And then we have to move.” They talked and decided that in two days they’d move.

Another problem was that I refused to breast-feed. I didn’t want anything to do with it. For us, as in America, it’s known to be healthy to breast-feed. But I just couldn’t do it. So one woman said, “Oh! Lemasolai!” “Proud one.” That’s how I got my name: Lemasolai. He’s proud, he refused to breast-feed.

They tried every trick. They tried offering me cows: Our people believe even an infant understands about the cattle. “Take that cow!” my father said. “I’ll give you that cow! And I’ll give you that other one, too, if you breast-feed!” But I didn’t listen.

At the time, there was a little cow that had lost its mom. It slept in the hut with us and some of the little goats. My father had made a leather bottle to feed the calf with, and one woman said, “Hey, why can’t he share with the calf?” So I grew up drinking from the same bottle as that little cow. A lot of kids made fun of me, and I put on a lot of weight because I got a lot of cream from the cow instead of getting milk from my mom. But my family gave me that cow. It was the first one I owned.

Two or three days later, the village moved. I was put in a special carrying case made of cowhide and bamboo and placed on top of a donkey. My mother walked beside me. We traveled for a whole day to another area. So really, my life as a nomadic child started when I was three days old.

Chapter 3

Cows

My roar is like thunder.

My cows have nothing to fear.

Fear rests with the cowards,

The cowards of the enemy camp.

MY EARLIEST MEMORY is of sitting outside our hut. I was probably three and a half or four. It was a sunny day, and around me the women were busy breaking camp. My mom was taking down our hut, getting ready to move. I was playing with rocks. I was just starting to learn the names of our cows, and I was lining the rocks up and calling them in, the way my father and brothers did with the real cows. There was a knife lying on the ground. I picked it up to play with, and all of a sudden—blood! It didn’t bother me—there was no pain, just lots of blood. Then someone saw me. “Hey, look at Lekuton’s son!” My mother came running over. She started crying, and then of course I started crying, too. The wound healed—my mother treated it with some herbs—but I still have the scar, under my right eye.

Cows are our way of life. They give us milk and blood and sometimes meat to eat and hides to wear. They’re our wealth. We don’t have money; we have cows. The more cows somebody has, the wealthier he is. My mother has lived her whole life in a hut made of sticks and cow dung, and you could put everything she owns on the seat of a chair. She lives entirely on the cow. For her, there’s something wrong with someone who doesn’t have cows. It’s just not civilized.

With cows comes respect. The more cows a man has, the more respect he gets. A man with a big herd will be listened to by the others in the village. But if that man loses his cows because he doesn’t care for them properly, or is too lazy to take them to better pastures, no one will pay attention. The respect goes with the cows; a poor man does not have a voice. The reason? We know someone with a lot of cows has worked hard, taken risks, brought his cows to where there is grass and water.

We have three criteria for judging a cow. Number one is the color. The best color is white with a lot of black spots, like an Appaloosa horse. To us, that is the most beautiful cow. Number two is the horn. We like a male cow to have big, even horns. And number three is the personality of a cow. A good cow is always at the front of the herd. If the cow is always late, if he’s always behind all the other cows, he’s not considered a good cow. We do not care about how heavy a cow is. Never. Just the beauty of its color, the size of its horns, and how active it is.

We name our cows. Each cow has a name, like a person, almost. My brother knows the names of all his cows, all of them. At night when he walks home after taking care of his cows, he will stand on raised ground and look down at them.